Who Could Possibly Want the Worst Job in Trump’s Cabinet? |
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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, a newsletter that is to American politics what a pressure-cleaner trailer is to Tiger Woods’ speeding car.
Congress went on spring break this week. That left the nation’s capital to President Donald Trump, who filled the vacancy with a prime-time speech about how the Iran war is over (or possibly escalating). He also attended a Supreme Court hearing on birthright citizenship—but it was another court case that caught our attention.
He also fired someone! To the rankings.
Who wants this impossible, degrading, no-win job next?
Trump finally fired his attorney general this week after months of whispers about when he would do so. He’s long resented her inability to contain the frenzy surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein files. And unquestionably, her management of that issue was almost as bad as Donald Trump’s. More broadly, though, Bondi was unable to adequately perform the job that Trump wants in an attorney general: being a personal legal instrument who will fulfill orders to prosecute Trump’s enemies. No doubt she tried in some cases, staining the Justice Department in the process. But, as with the failed prosecutions of Jim Comey and Letitia James, trying wasn’t good enough.
So who’s got next? Here is the gig. The president will insist you do things, such as prosecute people who offer unflattering commentary about the president on Morning Joe, which are not allowable under the law and violate basic right-and-wrong lessons from kindergarten. The choice is to either tell him directly that those things aren’t possible—no thanks!—or try them, only to be humiliated by either a grand jury or a judge. The daily grunt work of humoring the president does lasting damage to the Justice Department and your own personal reputation and legacy, while failing to earn the president’s respect. Eventually, after a year or two of otherworldly stress, and oceans of criticism from all Democrats, the president, and the president’s base, the president will fire you on social media. Whose appetite for pain is strong enough to win the job?
When the speech could’ve been a Truth Social post.
Trump addressed the nation on Wednesday night. Why, though? It’s not as if he was announcing the end of the Iran war—sorry, “military operation.” Instead, he gave a marginally more formal “update” about progress in Iran than he gives all day on social media or in quick press availabilities. It was the usual: We’ve done a whole bunch........